Bleach : Macrocosm
by LordCaelistis
Summary: After Yhwach's defeat, the Gotei 13 tries to settle back into a state of relative peace and stability. As the Council of Souls convokes every Soul Society to deal with the aftermath of the Great War, new machinations unfold... (Ignores CFYOW's plot)


"Hurry up, hurry up," whispered the wind in the man's ear.

Fallen leaves and rotten branches were creaking and crunching under his feet. As he ran through the dense forest, he jumped over a few dead trees which blocked the path, left to rot once brought down. These redwoods had their trunks snapped in half, slashed apart, in a word, pulverized.

The man did not like death ; he liked duty. Trampling on vegetal corpses always left a bitter yet almost impossible to perceive taste in his mouth. It wasn't pacifism. Just a distate for disorderly conduct, and for wasting natural resources, whichever they may be.

"Hurry up, hurry up," chanted the wind.

A branch snapped under the man's foot. Sung the same song as broken bones, when you perfected the technique. It sickened him long ago, when he was a freshman, when the only battles he fought were childish scuffles at the academy, when the only questions he asked himself were whether this or this girl would like him.

He suppressed an expletive as his foot slid on the blood-gorged soil. The earth drunk voraciously the vital liquid, as if starved. The man hoped this blood belonged to someone he didn't know. Someone his duty ordered him to kill, not an unknown comrade.

He felt it harder to mourn fellow faceless soldiers.

"Hurry up, hurry up," roared the wind, as the man whizzed past a few more broken trees.

The destruction became more rampant as he went on through the forest. He had lost his team a few steps ago, or perhaps was it a dozen steps, a hundred of steps? Half his squad had been ordered to scout the area. Quite cynically, they realized it meant more messengers could escape on their last legs, if need be.

His superiors had been very clear about the Heart. Concise little lies, little veiled truths. How only Captain-ranked soldiers could, under any circumstances, access the Heart, or simply come near. Otherwise, they were to execute on the spot any tresspasser, who would as much as put a toe in a 5 kilometers radius.

Myths, as always, were far more honest once you peeled away the superstitions. The Heart (it was more of a Core, really, mostly since there was multiple Hearts, and thus betrayed their name ; but spirits tended to be hopelessly romantic against all odds, and nobody felt they should start calling them Cores) held together every structure, every living being, every element made out of reishi in their area.

Bring it down, the whole region crumbled away. In a way, the Spirit King was the Heart of Hearts, for his death brought the whole Spirit Realm down ; but losing a single Heart was just as inacceptable.

"Hurry up, hurry up," tried to howl the wind, but the man whizzed past conscious thoughts a long time ago as he lost himself in the blurred see of redwood trees and of bloody dirt and of splintered barks.

Then the wind died down, as the Heart shone brightly.

He had been only recently excavated. It's light was bountiful, a dazzling radiance which burned itself into your mind once you saw it. Pure, undiluted reishi lighting up the sky.

Then a shadow danced upon the Heart, as screams resonated and limbs flew past the trees' crown. A kaleidoscope of violence unleashed itself, marring the sky with sprays of blood. The Heart's brilliance went ruby as it became splattered with fluids.

The man breathed in deeply and focused.

He was a high-ranking officer ; he didn't feel worthy of his rank, but he knew his duty, right there, was to stop this shadow. Never would he back down. Not now.

A spot of shadow to his left. Just a little above his head. A kick whistling in the wind.

The man parried it with a palm strike, just on the shin. He tried to grasp the leg, but no - already was the shadow spinning on itself, it's thigh shifting softly against the callous flesh.

The shadow spun just above the man's fingers, frustratingly just above grasping height. It rotated in a flash, and dropped just a little too fast to be natural ; then went a scything kick to the ribs.

The sound of bones crunching, like fallen leaves and rotten branches being stepped upon. A searing pain.

The man hunched down by reflex, trying to cover his wounds, a very clear handicap, but already was the shadow moving again, shifting around, a blur of a dark hooded cape. It sliced the man's knee just above the thigh; how? No blade had been drawn.

The man fell on his back. He was done for ; he knew it. Couldn't move around and his stump would make him bleed out in no time ; bone fragments embedded themselves in his vital organs. Two lethal strikes, delivered in a blink, crushing skill and talent for a nefarious cause. Did he have regrets? Of course he had. He layed only a hand, and it was nothing more than a graze, almost a lucky strike. At least, there was something oddly comforting in dying for a good cause, even if in vain.

Then, he saw him. Another shadow joined the ranks, same dark cloak, same hood over the eyes. But this shadow was distinctly stroking it's beard, almost absently, eyes lost in the somber scenery.

"S-sir? Is... that you?"

The shadow barely acknowledged this murmur, shifting incomfortably on it's feet. The other shadow landed next to him, and suddenly it occured to the man that the forest had gone very, very quiet. The Heart stood there buried, onlooking like a shiny otherworldly pearl that looked just a bit too much like an eye.

"Indeed, I fear it is me. Please pardon me for not remembering your name, nor rank. I tend to be forgetful about futilities, as you no doubt have understood. And please pardon me for not stating very clearly what tonight's mission's purpose was. Bad communications kill, you know the saying?" He continued stroking his beard, feigning embarassment when the words he spoke had clearly been mulled over and over, as authentic as an advertisement for a counterfeit product.

"Anyhow... you _were_ to intercept the enemy, and you quite prodigiously did so, hmmm ? What a shame. I never told you _who_ the enemy was. Neither did I tell you you could survive the encounter. Now, now... please, could you avert your eyes? I fear the night isn't over yet, and plunging you into the depths of despair isn't my definition of fun. Please, please, just rest in peace." This unexpected threat had already taken several steps towards the Heart by now. The other silhouette by his side moved with a very feminine stride, it's slender legs and waist giving away what the cape ought to hide.

The man could only, despite his commander's request - or was it really an order? - wallow in despair as his eyelids slowly slid down, hazing his vision. Just as his last heartbeats echoed through his soon-to-be corpse, he heard the distinct sound of somebody whacking with force on a glass sphere.

An unceasing beating, resonating clearly in the empty (yet weighted down with death) atmosphere that had just settled down.

Then, a crack. And to end all life, a torrent of power rushing through the earth, drowning every sound, obscuring with a blinding light everything to be seen.

* * *

It was barely half past noon as a messenger entered Shunsui Kyoraku's office. Every Captain was used to be swamped under piles of administrative paperwork, but the Captain Commander's position outright drowned him under a thin, ink-covered tsunami. He had just come back from his lunch break when the messenger slid the door open, panting.

"A v-very urgent c-communication, sir."

As he didn't hold any parchment or letter, Kyoraku tensed. If nobody wished to write that information down, it would either be a tremendous waste of time, or very confidential. The young man was a _riteitai_ , trained by the Onmitsukudo to safely deliver, as fast as possible, sensitive information.

"Oh, really, is it? Well, why don't you take a seat and you tell me it about it, hmm?" said Shunsui, trying to be as grandfatherly as he could. Yet, he wasn't old enough to bring back memories of Yamamoto, and Yamamoto hadn't been kind to the messengers. The slender boy bowed as protocol ordered it and sat on his heels. Shunsui then remembered he had borrowed one of the only intact chairs in the First Division, and made a mental note about ordering some new ones.

"Captain Soi Fon first a-asked me to warn you... this communication was t-transmitted via Kido, from an unknown location. We haven't u-understood it's content, either".

Shunsui furrowed his brows. As antiquated were the Soul Society's customs, most messages were now sent through telegraphs, or phone-like devices. These items were absurdly expensive to make in the Soul Society, because of the materials' rarity. The vast majority of the components had to be imported from the Human World, and Central 46 heavily taxed trade between realms (although under the impulsion of a few of their members, they started to open themselves to Human culture).

If you couldn't afford human-like technology, then you hired a messenger on foot, or trained a pigeon. They were riskier but infinitely less expensive means of trading information. But Kido was avoided as much as possible, because anyone with average spiritual pressure and at least passing knowledge of the mystical arts could intercept and decipher a Kido-transmitted communication.

Urgent enough to be sent by Kido, obscure enough to elude comprehension, yet not a garbled mess, as Soi Fon felt necessary to inform the Captain Commander. Boy, did it sound like a problem.

"My, my, that's quite embarrassing... who received the message first? Not to depreciate Captain Soi Fon's judgement, but perhaps would it have been wiser also to send a messenger to the Kido Corps?"

"T-the Kido Corps themselves, sir. The message actually wasn't a-aimed at anybody in particular. Once the Kido C-corps informed us, Captain Soi Fon immediately sent me to inform you, and at the same time sent another _r-riteitai_ to the Kido Corps to interrogate them and learn of any details. The 12th Division is also to interrogated."

Shunsui scolded himself. Of course Soi Fon would take all necessary steps (and go further than needed, _just in case)._ Yet... he had been used to her efficiency as a colleague, an equal, a comrade-in-arms. While supervising her, he found that more often than not, he meddled in his subordinated Captains' tasks. Most simply were polite enough not to point it out. Shunsui had, in the Eigth Division, taken the habit of helping every soldier under his care. As one of the oldest veteran, he felt obligated to help the new generation grow, to show them the way.

Soi Fon neither needed or wanted someone to show her the way. Except for Yoruichi Shihoin, of course.

"...My bad." He pushed his hat slightly upward, looking at the _riteitai_. "Well, let's hear it, shall we?"

The messenger shifted awkwardly.

"It precisely says... "Council of Souls. First Valley of Screams. Peace. Heart. Rebellion. Unknown. Soul King." As you can see, it isn't aything else than a string of words, seemingly unrelated ; our best cryptoanalysts are trying to decode the message. It has also been sent in several other langages." Interestingly enough, the messenger did not stutter.

Shunsui's chest became heavy, as his heart raced and pounded. He wasn't panicking, no ; it was the excitation and the anguish you felt when a forlorn friend, thought to be dead or disappeared, showed up at your doorstep and asked you to back up his military campaign. Quite the complicated feeling indeed ; as singular as the message was.

"I do believe I understand this message. I believe I understand it very well. I would need you to gather the Captains and Vice-Captains. We have been invited, and I fear it would be impolite if we didn't honor our allies with our presence."

Puzzled, the messenger bowed, and left without a sound, carefully sliding back the office's door. Shunsui let a heavy sigh escaped as he reclined in his chair, and gazed at the window. The clear blue sky had seemed inviting this morning ; it now looked as pale ice, cold even to the sight, unstable footing which could provoke your fall at any moment.

"More a thousand years, and someone decides to convoke us in the Council of Souls... how troublesome. If only you told me how you escaped them... Captain Yamamoto, Unohana..."


End file.
